288 OBSTRUCTIOX IS DESTRUCTION. 



kidneys, to carry off anything but their o'-vn proper excretions. 

 The skin, on the contrary, can be assisted to do double duty for 

 weeks or months together, not only without injury, bat with 

 great advantage to itself, as well as to all the rest of the body. 

 "We can get at the pores of the skin ; we can take away every 

 particle of dust ov adhesive matter that obstructs them ; we can 

 even soften the recently closed pores, as with a poultice ; we can 

 warm and steam them, and liberate the chilled perspiration that 

 had obstructed them, so that the blood will not have to jjuU 

 them down and btiild new ones, as it must otherwise have done. 

 In so doing we not only relieve the lungs but we get a better 

 skin, more able and more willing to do its work in future, and 

 less liable to become obstructed or diseased. 



705. — If a large portion of the pores of the skin are 

 obstructed and are allowed to remain so, the kings cannot long 

 continue their necessary work. Only healthy, well warmed, and 

 purified blood can pass through such delicate, small tubes, and 

 obstruction is destruction or death to them, so that if the skin 

 long and seriously fails to do its share in refining the blood, 

 the lungs will not only soon fail to do double work, but will soon 

 be unable to do any work at all. Each obstructed tube, either 

 in skin or lungs, soon becomes a piece of dead, decaying animal 

 matter, that instead of purifying soon begins to poison the 



blood. 



Hence the fact that when an eighth part of tlie skin has been 

 seriously burned, even in the most healthy person, recovery is 

 regarded as hopeless, because so much dead, putrid, and therefore 

 deadly poisonous matter has to be taken up 1)y the blood, with a 

 diminished purifying surface to get rid of it. The blisters, the 

 Spanish flies, or ammonia, so commonly prescribed for disease of 

 the lungs, perform the same work on the skin as a fire would do ; 

 that is, they destroy a portion of the purifying surface of the 

 skin, and substitute for it dead, putrifying matter, that must be 

 taken up by, and poison the already diseased blood. In other 

 words they give the blood a certain amount of poison to carry 

 into the lungs, where there is already such a load of poison 

 of the same character wanting to be carried out. 



